New Delhi: In an effort to capture new consumption patterns in India and provide a more accurate measure of inflation, the upcoming Consumer Price Index (CPI) series with 2024 as the base year (previous base year was 2012) will collect price data from e-commerce platforms across selected 12 cities, that have a population of over 25 lakh, Saurabh Garg, secretary, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) told ThePrint in an interview.
According to Garg, the new Consumer Price Index series, which is expected to be released in the first quarter of financial year 2026 would also explore alternative data sources like web-based platforms to get prices related to airfares, telecom charges and over-the-top (OTT) services.
“The adoption of these new data sources is expected to significantly enhance the representativeness, reliability, accuracy, and overall quality of the Consumer Price Index,” Garg said.
An updated base year for the Consumer Price Index would allow the Reserve Bank of India to make more informed decisions regarding monetary policy, while it also helps the government to customise social welfare programmes (pensions, wage revisions, food subsidies) that are aligned to inflation.
The change in the base year to 2024 for the CPI to track retail inflation and cost of living is a timely intervention to capture new consumption patterns in India amid rising income levels. It would provide a more accurate measure of inflation as it will capture consumer spending on digital services that has substantially increased over the last few years.
The revised index will represent a new basket of items with different weightage patterns and compilation methodology to enhance quality and representativeness of the index, said the MoSPI secretary.
For context, the weightage of food items is expected to come down in the overall index to represent new consumption patterns among people. In the current CPI basket, food and beverage as a sub-group category has a weightage of 54.18 for rural sectors while it is 36.29 for urban sectors.
‘CPI to have more accurate representation of prices’
According to Garg, exclusive data from different ministries will also be collected to have a more accurate representation of prices—rail fares from the Ministry of Railways, fuel prices (petrol, diesel, LPG) from the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, and postal rates from the Department of Posts.
While the new base year and revision of weights is likely to enhance the quality of the consumer price index, comparing it to the previous years’ datasets would be difficult.
“Direct comparison between the two series may not be appropriate,” said Garg. However, the ministry is planning to release a linking factor and a back series for the new Consumer Price Index, thereby enabling users to make meaningful comparisons between the new and existing series.
The new series is being developed based on the findings of the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) 2023–24 that collects data on spending patterns of households and assess living standards.
Apart from the consumer price index, MoSPI is also in the process of introducing a new Gross Domestic Product (GDP) series with base year as 2022-23 (previously 2011-12) from February 2026. The new Index of Industrial Production (IIP) with 2022-23 as base year (previously 2011-12) is also slated to release in April 2026.
Revision of Periodic Labour Force Survey
The MoSPI secretary also said that the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) has also been revised since January 2025 to collect information on household income from specific non-economic sources that include rent received from land and buildings, interest received on investments, pension received in a month and remittances received from abroad.
Launched in 2017 by the National Statistics Office, the PLFS provides estimates of employment and unemployment indicators across rural and urban areas.
According to Garg, the objective of this exercise is to get a comprehensive picture of a household income and determine the activity status of a person.
“The unit-level data on these aspects is currently not available in the public domain and will be disseminated along with the PLFS Annual Report, 2025, scheduled for release in March 2026,” Garg said.
Starting January 2025, the ministry also revised the rotational panel sampling scheme under which each selected household is visited four times in four consecutive months, thereby enabling uninterrupted monthly, quarterly, and annual labour force estimates.
Based on the updated methodology, the first ever monthly PLFS report for April 2025 was released on 15 May 2025.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
Also read: 44% rural households spend cash benefits from govt on increased food consumption—Economic Survey